Something Is Similar, No?

January 24th, 2011

Happy New Year! Now what? Well, there is quite a lot actually. As many AUGI members know by now, the later part of 2010 and early 2011 have been quite momentous. In early December the new website was unveiled, but unfortunately did not include the old, dearly loved, vBulletin based forums. The Board knew we needed to fix that and once we finally reached agreement on our old forum data restoration method, promptly installed the vB forum system and then populated with the old data. By the time you read this we may still have more to do, but it will get done in short order.

Also new with the turn of the year was a series of director appointments. As happens with volunteer management, a number of directors resigned at the end of the year for personal reasons. These empty seats have been filled with some familiar faces and new ones. We have Melanie Perry from St. Louis, MO, USA. She has been active for years at the volunteer level and doing things such as the annual salary survey. Next is R. Robert (Bob) Bell from Seattle, WA, USA, an ex AUGI Director from a number of years ago. Bob is very active on the web management side of things as well as some forum work. Then we have Scott Wilcox from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, an active forum member who has done AUGI committee work recently and who is geared to help on the ATP. Lastly, we welcome a new Director, Shaun Bryant from Norwich, UK, who was elected in the 2010 Director elections.

Obviously the website is the biggie but it does have a new baby as well. The AUGI Library is poised to be a wonderful addition to the AUGI family of benefits. Our authors create so much content that we needed to step back and think about how best to gather it all together. That is how the Library was born. It unifies the publications, AUGI HotNews and magazines, along with other submitted content. Perhaps you want to write, but not blog. The Library could be your channel to post your technical content, right alongside material submitted by regular publication authors!

Now we ended 2010 with a bang, and a contest! During the month of December we ran a competition to see who would win a free trip to AU2011 in Las Vegas. Frankly we have been busy with other issues, but have recorded the usage statistics and members and will begin validating those who qualify for the random drawing grand prize soon. Look for an announcement on this topic as early as next month.

And with that we start 2011 off running a good clip already. I encourage you to look around and try some things you have not done before. Stop lurking…it doesn’t suit you!

About the Authors

David first began using AutoCAD in 1987 in the Structural Engineering discipline. He later joined the Board of Directors for NAAUG, and later AUGI. He is an established technical editor and author, having worked on over eight books. He also teaches at Autodesk University and occasionally writes for magazines such as AUGIWorld.